5 Spiral Drive, Suite 100
Florence, KY 41042
Kids on the Block
Family Nurturing Center’s Mission is to end the cycle of child abuse by promoting individual well-being and healthy family relationships. For nearly 42 years, the agency has been a leader in providing quality, innovative and effective child abuse education, prevention and treatment programs to our community. Through a comprehensive range of services in our Kentucky and Cincinnati locations, Family Nurturing Center provides free services to more than 30,000 people each year.
The Dater Foundation’s grants supported one of our most popular and effective education and prevention programs for children ages preschool through grade 5 “Kids on the Block”. Kids on the Block provides educational storytelling on issues of child abuse and bullying through skits using life-size Kids on the Block puppets. This dynamic, interactive program includes a Q & A following the program with puppeteers who are specially trained to interact with the children, answer questions and assist with any disclosures of abuse or bullying that may come about as a result of children seeing the show.
The Covid-19 pandemic cut short the in-school schedule but much of our planned programming for 2019-20 was completed before quarantine began. In response, a series of videos were created using the puppets Claire, Nam and Stephen to read the following books for both child abuse and bullying: “Hands are not for hitting” by Martine Agassi; “Your body belongs to you” by Cornelia Spelman; “I like myself” by Karen Beaumont, and; “Lucy and the Bully” by Claire Alexander. These were also posted on the Family Nurturing Center website and Facebook page.
Support from the Dater Foundation help provide 221 performances that reached 14,452 children and 1,365 adults (includes bullying skit). The program's target goal of 80% was surpassed as 89% of children viewing the program demonstrated increased knowledge scores on pre- and post-tests that measured knowledge gained about child abuse and bullying. Equally important is that 98.5% of teachers responded that our program provides valuable information for students. Because of lessons learned through Covid and finding out that our program can be effectively delivered by video, the Center will consider both in-person and virtual presentations in the future.
Note: Two grants were made in the Dater Foundation's 2019-20 fiscal year … they covered two programmatic years for the Family Nurturing Center … $25,000 in September 2019 and $15,000 in August 2020.
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